I don't have much time, but I have a few comments about New Jersey/New York.

How can a state that is ETERNALLY cloudy be known as the Garden State? We really need a better nickname, folkz.

"Twp" is a terrible abbreviation for "Township".

What the hell is a Township, anyway?

I know the real reason everybody takes the subway instead of driving. It's the roads. This place has the worst roads I have ever seen. Anything less than an F-150, and you're rockin' and rollin'.

I also may have figured out why this place looks some ramshackle to me. This is it: Land is expensive, so space is at a premium, and people want to make the most of their land. The result is a bunch of buildings right up against each other. In Atlanta, they're a lot more apt to put a little strip of green between themselves. The result here is that everything looks a bit disjointed.

Me to the Avis bus guy: "Can I have a map?"ABG: "You'll have to get one at the gate on your way out."Me to the Avis Gate Guy: "Can I have a map?"AGG: "I don't have any. You'll have to get one at the office."

Sigh. Nevermind.

This rant sounded a bit more...ranty...last night when I was driving, but it was 1:something in the morning and I prioritized.

But what did you doWhat did you sayOh did you walk or did you run awayWhere are you nowWhere have you beenDid you go alone or did you bring a friend

I need to know thisCause I noticeYou smilingOut in the sunHaving funAnd Feeling free

And I can tell you know how hard this life can beBut you keep on smiling for me

So what went rightWhat went wrongWas it a story or was it a songWas it over nightOr did it take you longWas knowing your weakness what made you strong

Or all the aboveOh how I love to see you smilingAn oh yeahTake a little pain just incase

You need something warm to embraceTo help you put on a smilin faceFaceSmiley face

Don’t you go off into the new day with any doubtHere’s a summary of something that you can smile aboutSay for instance, my girlfriend, she bugs me all the timeBut the irony of it all is that she loves me all the timeOh see

I wanna be you whenever I see you smilingBecause its easily one of the hardest things to doYour worries and fear become your friendsAnd they end up smiling at youPut on a smiling face

So today I was driving around, and thinking about Mother's Day. I'm not really satisfied with it. At all.

A couple of reasons:

Why should I let society tell me when to recognize and celebrate my Mother?

What's so special about the second Sunday in May?

If I'm honoring my Mother on that day, then who's going to look after her Mother? Somebody is gonna get neglected at least a little bit.

So...in MY house, this is how we're gonna do it, and why:

Let's examine. Who is your Mother? The one who gave birth to you. Okay. So the center of it all is your birth. Okay. Well, your birthday is already celebrated, and it's all about you, not your Mother. In fact, many folkz DEMAND to be coddled and honored on their birthday, right? Do we usually pause on our birthday to say "Thank You" to our Mothers for bringing us into this world? No.

So this is what we're going to do, at least next year: We're gonna celebrate the day that Motherhood happened in our house. To not get in the way of standard birthday festivities, we're gonna celebrate Mother's day on the day BEFORE MiniMau's birthday.

We're gonna do flowers. Dinner. There WILL be a card.

Know what else? This year, on the day before MY birthday, I'm gonna call my Mother, and thank her for carrying me for those 9 months, and thank her for being cut from *here* to *here* for me. On the day before my wife's birthday, I'm going to call her Mother and thank her for giving birth to my wonderful wife. Get the picture?

For each friend who I'm close enough to remember their birthday, I'm close enough to recognize that that person wouldn't be my friend without their Mother.

A Georgia Department of Natural Resources officer finds a pile of discarded household items on private property. (Unlawful dumping.) While he's going through the debris, he finds an envelope of U.S. Savings Bonds AND a Diamond Watch AND a very nice pair of earrings.

He also finds an old envelope with a name and address. He goes to the address and finds the home of George and Mary Morris. George has passed away, and Mary is in an assisted living facility. It appears that relatives are looking after the house and according to them, the Savings Bonds were thought lost when the house was burglarized. He gives the family the savings bonds, and makes it a point to give the diamond watch and earrings to Mrs. Morris himself.

My thing is this: The article doesn't address how the household items got there in the first place. It kinda implies that they could have been taking during the "burglary" but not really. You're telling me that if I put the envelope with my mother's nest egg in a trash bag, along with her antique diamond watch and her vintage earrings, and just leave it at some in-the-cut ranch, that I may get lucky enough that Officer Friendly here will find my "trash" and return it to me? Knock on my door and say "I'm here to serve, sir. You dropped this. Have a nice life."?

Hell naw. I'll say it: That kind of stuff just doesn't happen to Black people. Even in the AoO. (Age of Obama)

According to Blogger, I drafted this on 7/11/06. It's a post that I never quite finished. Who knows why? Whether you think it was going in a good direction or not, I felt pretty good about it at the time! Enjoy.

A while back, I mentioned that I was reading The Art of War by Sun Tzu, and that I'd be sharing my thoughts and such on the book.

I'm still going to do that, but before I do that, I'm going to start my own tome, The Art of Pimping, by Iceberg Slim.

I read Iceberg Slim's Pimp a few years ago. Chock full of sage words, I must say. I'll go back to that one and see what there is to learn from it. Right now I'm on The Naked Soul of Iceberg Slim. I will most probably renumber the rules in The Art of Pimping later, but for now, here you go:

1. Suffering is inevitable and necessary for an aspiring pimp, pickpocket or con man...2. Sympathy is a counterfeit emotion for suckers which is usually offered with a crooked con grin of amused contempt and rejected with a spittled snarl.3. All of the countless whores I have known and those I have controlled revealed a hunger for notoriety and for punishment, psychic or physical or both. The phony glamour and cruelty of the pimp fill these needs and are the magnets tht attract and hold the whore to the pimp.

I realize that it's been a while since I've posted, and let's just say I've been busy. I'm not even going to apologize, because I've been legitimately busy, rather than simply slacking off.

At any rate, anyone who is disappointed at my lack of an apology is about to get even pissier. No really NEW content, but rather, old content that I never posted.

The "You Get the Gist" series will be posts that I started one day, and for some reason or another, never posted. You never know how they'll end. They may end coherently, or they may end in mid-sentence. Who knows.

So, a couple of weeks ago, Mrs. Mau and I took Mini Mau to see his Great-Grandmothers (That's all we have left.) Luckily, Mrs. Mau is from Augusta, GA, and my family is from North Augusta, SC (right across the state line, and the river), so we were able to kill two birds.

So, we're at my Grandmother's place. She lives in one of those apartment complexes for senior citizens? Right. One of those.

So, we're in there, and I hear this beep.

"What's that beep?" I say.

"What beep?" Says Grandma.

"I just heard a beep."This is where it becomes a good story.

Grandma says: "Your mother was here a week or two ago, and she said she heard a beep, too. I ain't heard no beep."

Me: "Well, has anyone else heard it?"

"No. Ain't nobody else heard it."

A little background here. My father's family is from North Augusta, so that means that no less than FIVE of my aunts and uncles are probably back and forth through my Grandma's place on a regular basis. Perhaps even daily. And NONE of them have heard the beep.

So, during the time I'm there, I hear the beep several more times, and each time, I mention it. Maybe 15 minutes between beeps. My wife could hear it. My aunt that came by during our visit - couldn't hear it.

"Yeah! I heard it a few times! Grandma said that you could hear it too. I was busy with Mini Mau, so I couldn't really look around for it, but it sounded like it was coming from the corner. Maybe even from next door."

This is what my mother tells me: Apparently, after both I AND my mother heard beeping, she decided there just might be something amiss. She called maintenance. The maintenance guy came. HE heard the beeping.

Okay, the beeping sounded like it was coming from right around her favorite spot to sit. Maybe even coming from somewhere on my Grandma. Now to eliminate possibilities. They took my grandmother outside. Still heard the beeping inside. Okay. One possibility eliminated.

Okay. Eliminate more. They cut the power to her unit. Still heard the beeping.

Still 15-20 minutes between beeps. So at this point, I'm thinking they were at it for the better part of the day.

Turns out that the beeping was coming from a prescription bottle. The beeping is to remind my grandmother to take her medication. Not to say that the pharmacist, or the physician didn't explain the bottle properly, but my grandmother is 95 years old! When it was all said and done, she seemed to remember the doctor mentioning something about a timer on the bottle, but that little 30 second tutorial clearly wasn't enough.